The “Will”

Outline:

1. The “Will.”

2. The Determination of the Will.

3. The Freedom of the Will.

1. The “Will.” Return to Outline.

Augustine, Bishop of Hippo (c. 354-430 A.D.):

How is it then that miserable men dare to be proud, either of their free will, before they are freed, or of their own strength, if they have been freed? They do not observe that in the very mention of free will they pronounce the name of liberty. But “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”[2 Cor. iii. 17.] If, therefore, they are the slaves of sin, why do they boast of free will? For by what a man is overcome, to the same is he delivered as a slave.[2 Pet. ii. 19.] But if they have been freed, why do they vaunt themselves as if it were by their own doing, and boast, as if they had not received? Or are they free in such sort that they do not choose to have Him for their Lord who says to them: “Without me ye can do nothing;”[John xv. 5.] and “If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed?”[John viii. 36.]

(Augustine of Hippo, A Treatise on the Spirit and the Letter, 52; trans. NPNF1, 5:106.) See also: ccel.org.

J. I. Packer:

     It is worth observing that will is an abstraction. My will is not a part of me which I choose to move or not to move, like my hand or my foot; it is precisely me choosing to act and then going into action. The truth about free agency, and about Christ freeing sin’s slave from sin’s dominion, can be expressed more clearly if the word will is dropped and each person says: I am the morally responsible free agency; I am the slave of sin whom Christ must liberate; I am the fallen being who only have it in me to choose against God till God renews my heart.

(J. I. Packer, Concise Theology: A Guide to Historic Christian Beliefs, [Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 1993], p. 86.)

Johnathan Edwards:

     And therefore I observe, that the will (without any metaphysical refining) is plainly, that by which the mind chooses any thing. The faculty of the will is that faculty or power, or principle of mind, by which it is capable of choosing: an act of the will is the same as an act of choosing or choice. 

     If any think it is a more perfect definition of the will to say, that, It is that by which the soul either chooses or refuses, I am content with it; though I think that it is enough to say, It is that by which the soul chooses: for in every act of will whatsoever, the mind chooses one thing rather than another; it chooses something rather than the contrary, or rather than the want or non-existence of that thing. So, in every act of refusal, the mind chooses the absence of the thing refused; the positive and the negative are set before the mind for its choice, and it chooses the negative; and the mind’s making its choice in that case is properly the act of the will; the will’s determining between the two is a voluntary determining, but that is the same thing as making a choice. So that whatever names we call the act of the will by, choosing, refusing, approving, disapproving, liking, disliking, embracing, rejecting, determining, directing, commanding, forbidding, inclining, or being averse, a being pleased or displeased with; all may be reduced to this of choosing. For the soul to act voluntarily, is evermore to act electively.

(Johnathan Edwards, Freedom of the Will, [London and Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson, 1845], Part I, Section I, pp. 1-2.)

A. A. Hodge:

     The term “will” is often used to express the mere faculty of volition, whereby the soul chooses, or refuses, or determines to act, and the exercise of that faculty. It is also used in a wider sense, and in this sense I use it here, to include the faculty of volition, together with all of the spontaneous states of the soul (designated by Sir William Hamilton, “Lectures on Metaphysics,” Lect. XL, the faculties of conation, the excitive, striving faculties, possessing, as their common characteristic, “a tendency toward the realization of their end”), the dispositions, affections, desires, which determine a man in the exercise of his free power of volition. It must be remembered, however, that these two senses of the word “will” are essentially distinct. The will, as including all the faculties of conation (the dispositions and desires), is to be essentially distinguished from the single faculty of soul exercised in the resulting volition, i. e., the choosing or the acting according to its prevailing desire. …A man in willing is perfectly free, i. e, he always exercises volition according to the prevailing disposition or desire of his will at the time. This is the highest freedom, and the only one consistent with rationality or moral responsibility.

(A. A. Hodge, Outlines of Theology: Rewritten and Enlarged, [New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1879], p. 282.)

2. The Determination of the Will. Return to Outline.

Thomas Aquinas:

     Free-will is the cause of its own movement, because by his free-will man moves himself to act. But it does not of necessity belong to liberty that what is free should be the first cause of itself, as neither for one thing to be cause of another need it be the first cause. God, therefore, is the first cause, Who moves causes both natural and voluntary. And just as by moving natural causes He does not prevent their acts being natural, so by moving voluntary causes He does not deprive their actions of being voluntary: but rather is He the cause of this very thing in them; for He operates in each thing according to its own nature.

(The “Summa Theologica” of St. Thomas Aquinas, Part I. QQ. LXXV.—CII., trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, [London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, LTD., 1922], Q. 83, Art. 1, Reply Obj. 3, p. 149.)

Note: See further: Concurrence (Concursus) — Primary and Secondary Causes.

Note: See further: Compatibilism — God’s Sovereignty and Human Responsibility.

Johnathan Edwards:

     By determining the will, if the phrase be used with any meaning, must be intended, causing that the act of the will or choice should be thus, and not otherwise: and the will is said to be determined, when, in consequence of some action or influence, its choice is directed to, and fixed upon, a particular object. As, when we speak of the determination of motion, we mean causing the motion of the body to be such a way, or in such a direction, rather than another.

     To talk of the determination of the will, supposes an effect which must have a cause. If the will be determined, there is a determiner. This must be supposed to be intended even by them that say the will determines itself. If it be so, the will is both determiner and determined; it is a cause that acts and produces effects upon itself, and is the object of its own influence and action.

     With respect to that grand inquiry, What determines the will? it would be very tedious and unnecessary at present to enumerate and examine all the various opinions which have been advanced concerning this matter; nor is it needful that I should enter into a particular disquisition of all points debated in disputes on that question, Whether the will always follows the last dictate of the understanding. It is sufficient to my present purpose to say, It is that motive which, as it stands in the view of the mind, is the strongest, that determines the will…

(Johnathan Edwards, Freedom of the Will, [London and Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson, 1845], Part I, Section II, pp. 5-6.)

R. C. Sproul:

If there is no prior inclination, desire, or bent, no prior motivation or reason for a choice, how can a choice even be made? If the will is totally neutral, why would it choose the right or the left? It is something like the problem encountered by Alice in Wonderland when she came to a fork in the road. She did not know which way to turn. She saw the grinning Cheshire cat in the tree. She asked the cat, “Which way should I turn?” The cat replied, “Where are you going?” Alice answered, “I don’t know.” “Then,” replied the Cheshire cat, “it doesn’t matter.”

     Consider Alice’s dilemma. Actually she had four options from which to choose. She could have taken the left fork or the right fork. She also could have chosen to return the way she had come. Or she could have stood fixed at the spot of indecision until she died there. For her to take a step in any direction, she would need some motivation or inclination to do so. Without any motivation, any prior inclination, her only real option would be to stand there and perish.

     Another famous illustration of the same problem is found in the story of the neutral-willed mule. The mule had no prior desires, or equal desires in two directions. His owner put a basket of oats to his left and a basket of wheat on his right. If the mule had no desire whatsoever for either oats or wheat he would choose neither and starve. If he had an exactly equal disposition toward oats as he had toward wheat he would still starve. His equal disposition would leave him paralyzed. There would be no motive. Without motive there would be no choice. Without choice there would be no food. Without food soon there would be no mule.

(R. C. Sproul, Chosen by God, [Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 1986], pp. 52-53.)

A. A. Hodge:

     24. If the immediately preceding state of the man’s mind certainly determines the act of his will, how can that act be truly free if certainly determined?

     This objection rests solely upon the confusion of the two distinct ideas of liberty of the will as an abstract faculty, and liberty of the man who wills. The man is never determined to will by any thing without himself. He always himself freely gives, according to his own character, all the weight to the external influences which bear upon him that they ever possess. But, on the other hand, the mere act of volition, abstractly considered, is determined by the present mental, moral, and emotional state of the man at the moment he acts. His rational freedom, indeed, consists, not in the uncertainty of his act, but in the very fact that his whole soul, as an indivisible, knowing, feeling, moral agent, determines his own action as it pleases.

     25. Prove that the certainty of a volition is in no degree inconsistent with the liberty of the agent in that act.

     1st. God, Christ, and saints in glory, are all eminently free in their holy choices and actions, yet nothing can be more certain than that, to all eternity, they shall always will according to righteousness.

     2d. Man is a free agent, yet of every infant, from his birth, it is absolutely certain that if he lives he will sin.

     3d. God, from eternity, foreknows all the free actions of men as certain, and he has foreordained them, or made them to be certain. In prophecy he has infallibly foretold many of them as certain. And in regeneration his people are made “his workmanship created unto good works, which God has before ordained that we should walk in them.”

     4th. Even we, if we thoroughly understand a friend’s character, and all the present circumstances under which he acts, are often absolutely certain how he will freely act, though absent from us. This is the foundation of all human faith, and hence of all human society.

(A. A. Hodge, Outlines of Theology: Rewritten and Enlarged, [New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1879], p. 291.)

Note: See further, Free Will (Libertarian?)

3. The Freedom of the Will. Return to Outline.

Augustine, Bishop of Hippo (c. 354-430 A.D.):

For it was by the evil use of his free-will that man destroyed both it and himself. For, as a man who kills himself must, of course, be alive when he kills himself, but after he has killed himself ceases to live, and cannot restore himself to life; so, when man by his own free-will sinned, then sin being victorious over him, the freedom of his will was lost. “For of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage.”[2 Pet. ii. 19] This is the judgment of the Apostle Peter. And as it is certainly true, what kind of liberty, I ask, can the bond-slave possess, except when it pleases him to sin? For he is freely in bondage who does with pleasure the will of his master. Accordingly, he who is the servant of sin is free to sin. And hence he will not be free to do right, until, being freed from sin, he shall begin to be the servant of righteousness. And this is true liberty, for he has pleasure in the righteous deed; and it is at the same time a holy bondage, for he is obedient to the will of God. But whence comes this liberty to do right to the man who is in bondage and sold under sin, except he be redeemed by Him who has said, “If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed?”[John viii. 36] And before this redemption is wrought in a man, when he is not yet free to do what is right, how can he talk of the freedom of his will and his good works, except he be inflated by that foolish pride of boasting which the apostle restrains when he says, “By grace are ye saved, through faith.”[Eph. ii. 8]

(Augustine of Hippo, The Enchiridion, 30; trans. NPNF1, 3:247.) See also: ccel.org.

Bruce A. Ware:

…the freedom of inclination proposes that we are free when we choose according to our strongest inclination or deepest desire. In short, we are free when we do what we most want to do. This means that the circumstances and factors that influence our decisions result eventually in our having, at the moment of choice, one desire or inclination that stands above all others. The fact that we have one desire that is our highest desire explains why we make the one choice that we do, in that particular setting. Put differently, the set of factors in which the agent makes his choice, along with the nature of the free agent, constitute a set of individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for forming within the agent a strongest inclination or highest desire by which he then makes the one choice that is in accordance with that highest desire. And, his freedom is then expressed when he chooses according to that highest desire.

(Bruce A. Ware, “Middle Knowledge Calvinism,” In: Calvinism and Middle Knowledge: A Conversation, eds. John D. Laing, Kirk R. MacGregor, Greg Welty, [Eugene: Pickwick Publications, 2019], pp. 124-125.) Preview.

Henry Stob:

It may be observed in passing, however, and only by way of reminder, that Calvinists are not “free-willists.” They assert indeed that man is free—that he is a moral agent not caught up in the wheel of things or determined by mere natural antecedents. But they apprehend that this is something else than freedom of the will. Man is free, i.e., he can under ordinary circumstances do what he wills to do. But the will is not free, i.e., there is no extra-volitional vantage point from which the will can determine itself. Man’s will responds to his nature, which is what it is by sin or by the sovereign grace of God. All of which leaves responsibility fully grounded, for nothing more is required for holding a man accountable than his acting with the consent of his will, however much this may be determined.

(Henry Stob, Ethical Reflections: Essays on Moral Themes, [Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1978], p. 152.)

Robert A. Peterson, Michael D. Williams:

     The bias to follow the dictates of the fallen nature is such that sinning is now inevitable.

     Since sinning flows naturally from the bias of the fallen heart toward sin, it is not the result of any compulsion external to human nature. The sinner sins not because he must but because he wants to. Yet, because he wants to sin, it is part of his fallen nature to sin, sinning is inevitable for the sinner. We might say then that sinning is inevitable, given our fallen bias toward selfishness, but it is not metaphysically necessary.

(Robert A. Peterson, Michael D. Williams, Why I am not an Arminian, [Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2004], p. 25.)

R. C. Sproul:

     The sinner sins because he chooses to sin, not because he is forced to sin. Without grace the fallen creature lacks the ability to choose righteousness. He is in bondage to his own sinful impulses. To escape this bondage the sinner must be liberated by the grace of God. For Augustine the sinner is both free and in bondage at the same time, but not in the same sense. He is free to act according to his own desires, but his desires are only evil. In an ironic sense he is a slave to his own evil passions, a slave to his own corrupted will. This corruption greatly affects the will, but it does not destroy it as a faculty of choosing.

(R. C. Sproul, Willing to Believe, [Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2018], p. 63.)

Note: See further, Does God Drag Unwilling Sinners to Heaven?

καὶ αὐτός ἐστιν πρὸ πάντων καὶ τὰ πάντα ἐν αὐτῷ συνέστηκεν ~ Soli Deo Gloria